3 o8 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



mainly for domestic purposes. It is 

 only since they have acquired firearms 

 that the natives have been able to effect 

 any appreciable diminution in the num- 

 bers of the game, which were not sen- 

 sibly reduced by the huge drives and 

 annual hunts formerly in vogue. 



"As regards firearms generally, far 

 more damage is done by wounding than 

 by killing outright, especially on the 

 part of Europeans. It is my belief 

 that, more particularly since the intro- 

 duction of small-bore rifles, three or 

 four animals at the least escape to die for 

 each one that is bagged. When the 

 man behind the gun is incompetent, the 

 proportion of wounded is naturally 

 greater. Rinderpest is, not without 

 reason, blamed for much of the diminu- 

 tion of big game, but a species left to 

 itself would recover from an epidemic in 

 less time than that covered by a human 

 generation, provided sufficient breeding 

 stock survived." 



Major Stevenson-Hamilton's allusion to 

 epidemics suggests passing reference to this 

 factor in the dying out of wild animals in 

 South Africa. Rinderpest, which, like "horse- 

 sickness," has more than once crossed the 

 Zambesi, depopulating vast regions of their 

 game, is said to be conveyed wholly through 



